Exercise-based cardiac rehabilitation improves functional capacity and quality of life in patients with heart failure, with emerging roles for telemedicine and tailored programs for special populations.
Does exercise-based cardiac rehabilitation improve outcomes in patients with heart failure?
Exercise-based cardiac rehabilitation is a recommended, safe, and beneficial treatment for heart failure patients that improves quality of life, functional capacity, and clinical outcomes.
Cardiac rehabilitation (CR) is a comprehensive program that includes exercise training, titration of medical therapy, lifestyle modification, educational support, and psychosocial assessment. All these components are safe and beneficial resulting in significant improvements in quality of life, functional capacity, mortality, and hospital readmission. Current guidelines support its use in a broad spectrum of cardiac disease. This review focuses on exercise-based CR for heart failure (HF) patients in whom CR is a recommended treatment. Exercise should be prescribed according to a personalized approach, optimizing, and tailoring the rehabilitative program to the patient's characteristics. Specific CR programs are dedicated to older patients, those with HF and preserved ejection fraction, and recipients of cardiac implantable electronic devices or left ventricular assistance device. Telemedicine may increase CR participation and overcome some of the barriers that limit its utilization.
Passantino et al. (Wed,) conducted a review in Heart Failure. Exercise-based cardiac rehabilitation was evaluated. Exercise-based cardiac rehabilitation improves functional capacity and quality of life in patients with heart failure, with emerging roles for telemedicine and tailored programs for special populations.
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